Yesterday I read an article that really raised my eyebrows recently. The article claimed that 40% of American meals are now purchased and consumed outside the home. This is very scary for the future health and wellness of this country and for generations of children. I myself used to be a big fast food eater so I totally get why it has become so addicting. My first child used to have McDonald’s 5 days a week while I was working. Then I got cancer and had a big revelation about my health and my diet. I would like to think that most fast foodies know somewhere inside themselves that they need to change and start making healthy meals at home. Finding out as I did, that you may never live to make those changes, can really shake you up. Someday cannot be put off even one more day.
Nowadays we rarely eat out. Once a month hubby and I hit the sushi bar for date night and occasionally we hit up Chipotle for a “primal” salad bowl. On special occasions, like birthdays, we may go to a restaurant as a family. That is about the extent of our eating outside of the home. We don’t ever order pizza. I think my kids did have McDonald’s around Halloween time because they really wanted the trick or treat bucket. I didn’t feel badly about it though because it is so rare. Pretty much every night we know that our food needs to be cooked and eaten at home. Once you make that commitment it just become normal. Here are some ways to bring the family back to the table…
1. Stock the Kitchen with Tried and True Favorites
You know what you like to eat and you know what your kids like to eat so stock up and make it easy on yourself by making certain meals each week. Monday can be meatloaf night, Tuesday can be almond crusted chicken wings night, Wednesday can be soup night, etc. Knowing what you need at the store and exactly what you will make, means cooking is so much easier!
2. Keep Some “Fast” Home Cooked Meal Ideas on File
Most of our meals require some planning on my part and often some advance preparation but it helps to have ideas when you need to cook it fast. When I am looking for a fast dinner option I go with egg salad, cauliflower soup, egg drop soup, or coconut flour pancakes. All of these can be made in 20 to 30 minutes and we usually have all the stuff to make them on hand. The bonus is that they are also kid friendly meals. I am always on the lookout for quick and easy recipes that I can file away mentally for nights when I didn’t plan well or I am short on time.
3. Shop Smart for Home Cooked Goodness on a Budget
There are all sorts of ways to eat healthy real foods on a budget. Some of my favorites include:
- Buying in bulk
- Using free shipping online or online deals and coupons
- Shopping after the meat dept closes when all the grass fed beef and lamb are marked down
- Buying from the Farmer’s Market just before close
- Buying the raw ingredients for processed foods and making my own (kefir, yogurt, kombucha, etc)
The money savings you experience while eating very well at home may be the incentive you need to keep it up! For more info I like the book Wildly Affordable Organic.
4. Menu Planning
Okay, I am terrible at meal planning beyond a couple days out so that is why I go with tip #1 most of the time but if you are a planner you can really hit home cooked meals out of the park. If you know exactly what you need to make and you have shopped in advance so that you have everything, you have no excuse to eat out. My menu planning usually consists of picking 3 to 4 slow cooker meals, 1 to 2 quickie staple meals, and then shopping for one week. At least one meal will be up in the air and decided when we get a good deal on something at the grocery.
5. Travel with Snacks
Many times the reason we decide to eat out is because we are on the move, we are tired, we are hungry, and we want something fast. To prevent this make sure to bring healthy snacks whenever you will be away from the house for a while. Beef jerky, dried fruit, cut veggies, nuts, Larabars, and granola all make quick snacks for on the go eating. Eating a little something keeps you from stopping because you are ravenous and it gives you the energy to go home and cook. I like to carry snacks in a Sigg box, they are perfect for grabbing and storing loose snacks fast.
6. Make Extra When You Cook
Use your slow cooker or your biggest casserole dish but make extra servings and freeze for later in the week. Do the work once, enjoy the food twice… nuff said.
7. Go on a Special Diet
Yes I am trying to convert you to paleo /primal. There are very few places we feel comfortable eating out and staying paleo (fast food anyways) so that means we just don’t eat out. When a pricey steakhouse or seafood joint becomes the only option beyond a few fast food options here and there… you make eating at home work or you suffer the consequences of a blown budget. In this case, having an unusual diet is a big boon.
What is your favorite tip for putting home cooked meals on the menu?
We’re probably at 99% whole, made-from-scratch meals. Once a month (or even less) I cave in and get the kids some fish sandwiches from Burger King because they love those. They have water to go with it (not soda).
One thing that helps us, budget and time wise, is buying hunks of meat from our local butcher (like an 8-pound boneless ham or turkey breast), nitrate and nitrite free. I cook them (the ham comes pre-cooked) and slice them up, storing them in the freezer in individual-sized portions. Then I can take them out and defrost as needed. I’ll add diced ham to dairy-free mac and cheese (all homemade with veggies and cashews), or saute some chopped turkey with onions and olive oil to have in tacos, topped with cilantro and salsa. It’s so much easier (and cheaper) to have pre-cooked portions of meat in the freezer, ready to toss into various meals. And tasty!
This is a VERY attractive and well written blog. I learned a lot reading your healthy eating tips, definitely have room for improvement there.
Wont the meat spoil? How long does it stay fresh?
If you are a stay at home mom, keeping a “pot” on the burner helps. I make soup twice a week or so. Make a big pot and we eat on it through out the week. I usually cook a full sit down dinner only a couple nights a week. The advantages of being a stay at home mom who homeschools is that we are always together talking, so night time meal time isn’t quite as critical for connecting.
I have a couple really great crock pot recipes that I can split when making. I freeze half the recipe to have available in a week and make half the recipe for that night.
I also try and do a baking day where I bake up some different snacks up. Things like muffins, bread (when we used to eat it), and even baked oatmeal in individual servings.
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I’m sensitive to many things they use to cook with (black pepper, cane sugar…) and allergic to all types of peppers (red, bell, cayenne), so it is just easier to eat at home vs going through the list of “I can’t eat that” and in South Louisiana if you are allergic to Cayenne you are up a creek. We do have our go to eat out places, one is organic only and they have a special dish on the menu for me :) the others aren’t so healthy, but they are accommodating and know us when we walk in the door.
Our biggest thing is time. With both of us working overtime, we never know if one of us will even be home for food, and when DH works over, they feed him at work. It really does make it difficult to plan anything. I always have pasta and spinach on hand for a quick runners fuel dish if I’m eating alone.
These are great suggestions. I generally try to make extra at night so I can send it to school with my daughter the next day. I love the idea of a big pot of soup for the week ~ also a big salad put together that you can munch on through the week is nice as well… and if you do bread ~ making some bread at the beginning of the week is nice as well. (not paleo though lol)
I often make a big a bowl of salad that lasts for 3 to 4 days in a Pyrex bowl in the fridge. It makes serving a side salad easy when its all prepared.
Great post! I like cook for at least two meals when I can. I believe that as long as I am messing up the kitchen, I may as well cook more than one thing! ;-)
I’m not very good at meal planning-I’ve tried, but it just doesn’t happen. I find that having the right foods around helps with good food choices. I always carry a piece of fruit in my bag-just in case- so I don’t grab the wrong food when I’m starving.
Loved your post. I came over from your comment on http://internetmarketingformommies.com. I have been looking into the primal diet.
I love this post! I can’t say I’m surprised that people eat out so much, we used to eat a lot of really gross stuff! Now, we are gluten free, dairy free, egg free, meat free and loving it! I DO meal plan and it saves us every week! It saves my sanity as well as out wallets! I recently started posting weekly menus on my blog because so many people have a hard time with it as well as I have a lot of friends looking for dairy free or gluten free meal ideas! Thanks for posting! fruitveggietales.blogspot.com
Love this article. I think we could all slow down and learn to enjoy our experience at the table. It’s easy to fall into consuming fast food all the time but with the planning – the dinner at home is so much more beneficial to our overall health.
Great post. Would definetly love to eat healthier here but not everyone is with me on that. Sometimes when I cook things that I know my daughter likes (she’s two hours up the coast in college) I’ll make extra and freeze it so the next time I go up or she comes down, I can give it to her. It helps her a little bit saving a little on groceries.
Great ideas. My only concern is the schedule of the true and tried favorites because it seems like a routine and my family might get sick of these favorites. I believe that when you keep on repeating favorite dishes, they’ll become less your favorite. It’s a weird idea of mine.
Just curious about the research behind your decision to go paleo. I am reading The China Study now, and it makes me concerned about the new paleo trend and the link between animal foods and cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.
The China Study is riddled with problems. Check out this exhaustive review by a raw food blogger who tears it into shreds.
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/08/06/final-china-study-response-html/
This is all a case of someone taking stats and only showing the ones they want while removing the ones that disprove their theory and calling it science. Also watch the movie Fat Head which takes on the general myth of animal and saturated fats being bad for you. He shows in detail how scientists took many liberties and how many of them had an agenda. Everything we were told about saturated fats is a lie.
What about the environmental impacts of the meat industry? The fact that one quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US come from cattle? More than our entire transportation system combined. That it takes 16 pounds of grain and 2500 gallons of water to raise 1 pound of beef? That 1 seventh of the world is starving while we fatten our livestock. That our system of eating meat every day is completely unsustainable. Any thoughts on that as a green blogger?
Yes. Don’t support factory farming. Just as I don’t think humans should eat grains, neither do I think we should eat animals fed grains. Buy grass fed, organic, local meat. Hunt and kill your own wild game.
It’s interesting how you don’t really answer the questions I’m asking, but instead are just spouting off your own agenda. Buying from family farms is a great thing, but in order for that type of farming to be sustainable, everyone needs to reduce their consumption of meat. You can’t feed the whole country meat every day in a sustainable way. It’s just not possible. And there is absolutely no way everyone in the world can eat the huge quantities of meat that Americans eat. The planet is enough of a disaster now, so we should let everyone else starve so that you can eat meat every day. One billion humans are starving right now and almost 900 million don’t have clean water. It takes 2500 gallons of water to raise one pound of beef. And you’re advocating that everyone should go paleo. That is completely ludicrous, especially from a supposedly green-minded person. And you still don’t address the greenhouse gas emission of cattle issue. As for the raw food blogger, if you actually read her website, she doesn’t eat very much meat at all. I initially posted here trying to get evidence-based sources on the paleo diet in order to see the other side of the argument. I guess you have no evidence, as I asked about your research behind the decision, and instead you point to someone else’s criticism of Dr. Campbell’s research. Lesson learned. I won’t ask questions here expecting to receive any real responses or information.
Actually I DID answer the question. When you say that it takes 2500 gallons of water to raise a pound of beef you are taking a statistic from FACTORY farming practices. So when I say don’t buy from factory farms I mean it and that is a valid answer. Grass fed, pastured cows do not eat grains (or many grains) and therefore no water is used to grow said crops. Also if fewer crops are grown to feed the animals then the soil is not being eroded, bombarded with chemicals, and land is not being hazed for crop growing. We cannot say for sure how well this will work to feed the entire world because very few farms operate in this manner comparatively and yet we know that it would be MUCH better for the planet and human health to do so. But you are welcome to naively keep harping on factory farming stats and act as though it is all the same thing. You can also turn a blind eye to the fact that unless people support better farming practices and more ethical meat choices there will never be any real change in this arena. Many folks will not give up meat no matter how much you parade a plant based diet in front of them but they can make better choices where meat is concerned.
I linked to the raw food site simply to show that even someone who mostly eats raw and plant based foods found that the China Study was a bunch of BS.Furthermore you also make assumptions that paleo foodies are meataholics or rely ONLY on beef. I most certainly am not. I have plenty of meat free meals that includes fruits, veggies, greens, sea vegetables, nuts, seeds, etc. We also plan to start hunting soon. Wild game is a far cry from farmed food and also managed strictly by environmental groups in every state. When I advocated paleo in this instance I was actually advocating for grain free more than meat centric. Perhaps I did not make that clear. It is hard to eat out when most fast food places and even restaurants serve grains based meals. I do not claim to have all the right answers for the world hunger/water crisis (maybe you can enlighten us all) but I do know of some good steps we can take and one of those is a return to grass fed, pastured, local meats and wild game. Another aspect is meat free meals but we must also recognize that mass agriculture can also be very bad for our planet and human health. Anyone saying a plant based diet will solve all these ills is selling a load of malarkey. For more hard facts and data read The Vegetarian Myth with really takes a hard look at how destructive plant farming is: http://amzn.to/GSaLML. Also read The Mindful Carnivore: http://amzn.to/GJOO1Z
Can you give me the recipe for egg salad, cauliflower soup, egg drop soup, or coconut flour pancakes.
We eat rice and lentils and chapati (flattened wheat bread) most days. Some days we have chicken curry and fish curry.
I lke these ideas. Do you have some quick soup ideas as well. Mychildren get bored of eating rice everyday, but I cant understand the basics of making a soup.
Awesome, I will definitely check out the book Wildly Organic. I feel much better eating paleo. Thanks for the tip.
I agree with all of your tips! And I had to laugh at #7 because I have life threatening food allergies and that keeps me from eating out much because so many places don’t take food allergies seriously.
Your diet would be easier in Oklahoma, lots of meat! :)
We eat lots of beans and rice. Easy to make in the slow cooker. I like to prepare the cauliflower soup too.
I love that you mentioned packing snacks! That’s the best way that we avoid eating out (which we are still struggling with). We have a medium size lunch box and I’ll toss baggies of grapes, pretzels, and, if it’s very possible to be out past dinner time, I’ll actually make us a “brown bag meal.” Drinks are another thing I try to keep on hand when we’re in the car. If you’re thirsty, it’s tempting to go through a drive through (and then get a large slushy instead of just a soda, and then the hotdogs at Sonic are ONLY $1.99, and the onion rings are soooo good! And then our toddler will want something too so we need to get the tater tots…and it goes on and next thing we know we ate dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon and spent $20).
Although it may seem like this is a lot of prep work for just hitting up a few stores around town (thought sometimes these “quick trips” can last 4 or more hours), it really only takes about 10 minutes or less. Just think, it can save your family $20 or more depending on where you stop. If everyone in the family has to drink the water or juice in the car instead of getting the refridgerated sodas (which are around $1.50 near the cash register), then that can save you a lot.
I like to get creative as well. I’ll pack a homemade iced coffee before running errands so I won’t be tempted. Plus, it’s nice to shop while drinking an iced caramel coffee with a little whipped cream on top (and it’s basically free!).